WELCOME
PRODUCT FEATURES
Thank you for purchasing the SA-500.1 power amplifier.
The introduction of the SA-500.1 solid-state power amplifier represents an all new amplifier design. It embodies a new modular approach that ensures consistency in performance, and ease of manufacture and serviceability. In implementing the new design, we have dramatically improved performance and current-handling capacity over our previous models while still maintaining the highest levels of sonic quality.
The SA-500.1 is a 500 watt monoblock amplifier into 8 ohms, (1000 watts into 4 ohms), with balanced and single ended inputs. The amplifier exhibits very high current capability, is stable into low impedance loads, and features 3 dB of dynamic headroom.
When we designed the SA-500.1 power amplifier, one of our primary goals was to create a product that would give years of consistent and reliable use without any maintenance. To achieve that goal we took a hard look at the design and choice of components. For example, we use high-precision metal film resistors in almost all our circuitry, even in places where their use is not required. We have overbuilt the output stage and increased the heat dissipating capabilities of the amplifiers by as much as 50% over our previous designs. The changes encompass almost every part of the design, down to the choice of thickness of the chassis sheet metal. The monolithic front end brought major advantages to the amplifier design with improved temperature stability, low offset, and a substantial reduction of all types of distortion across the full frequency spectrum.
Cary Audio Design has been known for over two decades as a producer of some of the finest and most musical tube amplifiers in the world. Based on this heritage we have paid special attention to the sonic qualities of these new solid-state amplifiers, voicing them to have the proven attributes of the “Cary Sound” and testing them hundreds of hours with many different speakers. In our quest to dramatically improve them over our previous efforts we compared them to some of the best of the competition, often at much higher price points. This took months of research and development time but we would not rest until we were satisfied that we had surpassed our previous models by a wide margin. The improvements in the power supply have brought gains in bass performance, which is now much more visceral and controlled even into difficult loads. Reducing the noise floor, increasing the isolation between the channels, and especially redesigning the sensitive front end of the amplifier has improved imaging, sound staging and depth retrieval. The midrange is now more lifelike and palpable. One area of which we are particularly proud is what we have achieved in transparency, and the way images now hang in three dimensional space. The amplifiers were designed to be equally at home in a high- performance music system or a home cinema setting.
